Wildlife Pictures, Page 2

High upon a signpost rearing, down upon pedestrians jeering,
Squawking rather nasty things not heard from any bird before;
Parking regulations broken, yet the bird paid not a token,
And the bird was so outspoken, taunting watchers at its fore,
Taunting that it need not pay the fee that we abhor.
This it laughed, and then it soared.

A whitetail fawn struggles through strong current to return to its mother. It lost its footing a couple times, and I thought for a moment it was going to wash down to me.

Along the roadside of the Denali Highway, a hunter more successful than I had a good sense of humor.

A couple Canada geese take off from the scenic but nasty, swampy, and apparently troutless headwaters of a small, beaver-ravaged stream.

A juvenile gyrfalcon.

This porcupine seemed to be feeding on the filamentous green algae that had accumulated around the tip of a fallen cedar sweeper on a classic piece of northwoods trout water.

A beaver swims around the swampy corpse of a trout stream his species destroyed, with a little help from ours.

A musk ox grazing near the Sag River in the coastal plain.

A great blue heron does a flyover on a flock of young common mergansers. I wonder how many hundreds of young trout go into the creation of a great blue heron and fifteen mergansers... hmm, where's Dick Cheney when you need him?

Photo by Elena Vayndorf.

A black bear cub stares down at me from a large pine near one of my favorite trout streams.